How to Inspect Unicode Characters and Find Hidden Symbols
Text that looks identical can contain hidden Unicode characters that cause bugs, formatting issues, or security vulnerabilities. This guide shows you how to inspect any text character-by-character to reveal Unicode codes, character names, and invisible symbols - essential for debugging text processing issues.
Step 1: Paste the Text You Want to Inspect
Go to fixie.tools/unicode and paste the text containing characters you want to analyze. This could be text causing bugs in your code, displaying incorrectly, or containing suspected hidden characters.
Step 2: View Character-by-Character Breakdown
The tool displays each character individually with its Unicode code point (U+XXXX format), official Unicode name, and category. For example, 'A' shows as U+0041 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A), while an emoji shows its full code point and name.
Step 3: Identify Invisible Characters
Invisible characters like zero-width spaces (U+200B), non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), or control characters are clearly marked with their names and codes. These hidden characters often cause mysterious bugs where text 'looks' identical but behaves differently.
Step 4: Understand Complex Characters and Emoji
Some characters you see as a single symbol are actually multiple Unicode code points combined. The inspector shows each component separately, explaining why certain characters take up more bytes or behave differently across systems.